Priest R G, Fineberg N, Merson S, Kurian T
St Mary's Hospital Medical School, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of London, Department of Psychiatry, United Kingdom.
Acta Psychiatr Scand. 1995 Oct;92(4):315-7. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0447.1995.tb09589.x.
We examined the length of stay of inpatients admitted to a psychiatric unit in central London. The commonest length of stay (mode) was less than 1 week. In general, subsequent weeks showed successively fewer discharges, so that the distribution curve of the number of patients by length of stay showed a smooth decline. Analyzing the first 13 weeks of stay, the distribution curve corresponded very closely to a theoretical exponential decay curve. This has implications for recording the average length of stay and thus for comparing one hospital unit with another. It may also have implications for planning for acute psychiatric services. A plea is made for using the median rather than the mean for recording the average length of admission for some purposes.
我们研究了伦敦市中心一家精神科病房住院患者的住院时长。最常见的住院时长（众数）少于1周。总体而言，随后几周出院的患者越来越少，因此按住院时长划分的患者数量分布曲线呈平滑下降趋势。分析住院的前13周，该分布曲线与理论指数衰减曲线非常接近。这对于记录平均住院时长以及比较不同医院科室有一定意义。它可能对急性精神科服务的规划也有影响。有人呼吁在某些情况下使用中位数而非平均数来记录平均住院时间。
